running with the moonlight
by ghoulfern
Summary: Melrae Ganrawyn is a Falmer, psychic, & one of few escapees from her race's twisted past. She arrives in Skyrim & joins the Thieves Guild, a team of rag-tag swindlers who take her in despite her unlike interests. When their leader Gallus is said to be dead by the hand of her friend Karliah, Mel is forced to flee with her in search of Gallus, & to hopefully bring him back. Alive.
1. memories

A/N: DISCLAIMER: *I don't own any of this besides my OCs*

This story takes place about five years before the events in the videogame Skyrim. Brynjolf is five years younger at the beginning of this fanfic, Vex isn't around just yet, and there are many random, originally named characters not mentioned in the game for the sake of populating the story a bit more. I couldn't find any concrete timeline for the Thieves Guild in order to gauge when exactly certain events took place, so I'm just saying that the Gallus and Mercer conflict took place 5 years before the Dragonborn came around. Consider this rather loosely based on the game's TG storyline anyway and don't actually expect the DB to show up, I'm still not sure whether or not I will include them. Anyways, any and all feedback is appreciated, as this is my first Skyrim fanfiction. Thanks for reading :~)

* * *

"We're going to die."

"Shut up!"

"We're going to die!"

"Shut _up!"_

Two elves stood in a clearing, one with a hood who looked absolutely mortified, and the other looking rather mild, even serene. The cowering one kept yanking on the others' cloak like a frightened child, her eyes darting between her friend and the robed Breton convoy that was steadily approaching them. Each mage had their respective staff drawn and approached the women as a daunting unit, their faces almost accusing. The smaller elf began to sweat, and looked hastily over to the other one, wanting desperately for her to have a plan. Instead, the taller elf simply held up her hand, gave a small nod of her head, then started walking calmly away, toward the Bretons. _Toward the threat_ , the smaller one thought, her inner voice just as nervous and quivering as her outer appearance.

"Hello, gentlemen," Karliah called as she approached the men, her lips stretching into a friendly, self-assured smile. The mages halted once they reached her, their staffs gripped in white knuckles, their mouths refusing to mimic the elf's. A few of them looked past her curiously, right at the other elf, who turned her face shyly to the ground and willed them to look away. After a brief moment, one of the mages near the front spoke.

"What is a _Dark Elf_ doing here in High Rock?" he asked nastily, his tone sharpening when he spoke of her race. "Shouldn't you be begging for change in the filthy dregs of Skyrim?" He was tall for a Breton, with dark brown hair held up in a bun and deeply intense eyes. His staff looked angry, twisted branches of shadowy wood embracing a glowing red ball of energy at the top. Karliah ignored his racism and instead eyed the staff, almost anxiously, but swiftly regained composure and widened her smile.

"My friend and I are merely visiting the country, sir," she replied kindly, holding out her open palms and tilting her head. "I am not armed," she said to the man, whose grip on his staff now slackened considerably. This small action reassured Karliah, and she found that she was now grinning. He hadn't searched her; he was a fool and, therefore, easy to convince. "It certainly is a stunning land, after all."

The mage surveyed her for a moment, then nodded slowly. "I see," he said, his tone of voice noticeably less severe. "Well," he paused, glancing over his shoulder to his comrades, who were all muttering amongst themselves, some of them with their staffs already stowed safely away at their backs. "I suppose I owe you an apology then, miss." He said this with a hint of annoyance, as if his politeness were a defeat, as if he would've liked nothing better than to annihilate a Dark Elf right there in the open. Karliah held back the urge to spit at his feet, or to assassinate him in front of his friends. "We'll leave you to it," he said briskly, then, nodding to the others, walked straight past her.

The other elf watched them go, her eyes widening in shock, her shoulders drooping with relief. Karliah waited a moment, then returned to her friend. "Mel," she said, cackling. "You really need to get a grip."

* * *

Melrae Ganrawyn was a Falmer, and wherever she went, people never let her forget it. Her bright appearance and pale freckles almost made her fit in with the snowy landscape of Skyrim. However, there were always people who might make a comment, reel back in shock, or even question her endlessly about her past as if they were entitled for an answer. Her camouflage, ironically and regrettably, doubled as a parade of rare features shouting for the attention of all. All she wanted was to forget her history, not to relive every minute detail to the point of rage, or tears. When she arrived in that mountainous pleasure of a country, everyone had hounded her for being one of few, an uncommon sight in all the world of Tamriel; all except Karliah, and, of course, the rest of the Thieves Guild. Her family.

Mel poked absently at the fire in front of her with a stick, her eyes glazed over and drooping with exhaustion. Karliah watched from beside her on the log, humming quietly, her hands on her knees. Mel glanced over at her friend, then back down when their eyes met in the firelight. "I miss them," Mel said softly, her words melancholy and heavy. Karliah chewed the inside of her cheek and nodded.

"I know," she said.

"Are we ever going to find him?" Mel asked. She turned to look at Karliah and found that the other elf's eyes were already filling with tears. She reached out to touch Karliah's shoulder. "I'm… I'm sorry," she said. "I keep… forgetting. You—you never told us." She didn't mean for it to sound like an allegation, but it came out with a bit of a bite to it. Karliah always told her everything, but had not once mentioned that she and their guild leader had been fraternizing. It colored their endeavor in a new, tragic way, and Mel had been avoiding the subject for the entire journey, despite the journey revolving entirely around him.

Karliah wiped away her tears, her movements abrupt, disjointed; very much unlike her. "Yes," she replied, ignoring Mel's unintentionally harsh comment. Her voice sounded choked. "Of course we're going to find him, Mel, I'll make sure of it." They both turned away from each other and stared once again into the crackling fire. Mel was about to retire to the tent for the night when Karliah spoke up again. "And if we don't," she said, her voice cold and bitter and utterly heartbroken, "I'll kill whoever did this."

* * *

 _The Ragged Flagon was alive with laughter and light, packed with jovial thieves clanking mugs of mead with their friends and joking animatedly. Melrae felt the air positively glimmering with friendship and energy as she gripped her mug, her body laying heavily against the bar, her face fully flushed, and her swimming eyes resting on a blurry, but familiar face—Brynjolf._

 _"Lass, ye better not drink yourself into a stupor like last Morndas. We all remember you dancing on this exact bar like a bloody lunatic." He laughed heartily as Mel glared at him before she broke the façade and began giggling madly._

 _"How could I forget? That was the night I smooched ole' Jinx square on the mouth, then vomited directly on his new boots." She pointed her finger toward the equally drunk Imperial behind them, who noticed her eyes and gave her a playful wiggle of his fingers in response, grinning. He turned away, back to a group of friends, and Brynjolf snorted. "'Course he nabbed 'em from some broad down in the Barb, he can go pilfer another pair if he can't get the smell out," she whispered conspiratorially to her redheaded friend, who promptly shoved her shoulder._

 _"That idiot's been goin' on and on about how much coin he shelled out for those damn shoes!" Brynjolf said, shaking his head and chuckling, his youthful face glowing as he smiled._

 _"Well, I'd have thought you'd know better than to think any different, coming from a notorious boaster like him." Mel smirked and downed the remainder of her drink, then pushed it toward Vekel with a waggle of her eyebrows. The large Nord shrugged, smiled at her, and went to refill it. She turned back to Brynjolf, who was watching her with an odd sort of intensity._

 _"Seems as if he's got a lot to boast about," he said in a whisper. They looked at each other for the briefest of moments before his eyes tore away from hers and he rose up off his stool. She had missed her chance to say anything in response, too busy trying to decode what his comment had meant. "I better be off, got a burglary in Whiterun that I'm not too enthused about. At least I can start the long travel with a warm belly." He brushed his hair out of his face before shooting Melrae a final look, then resting his hand on her shoulder and squeezing. "And I'm serious—lay off the mead tonight, Mel. You'll thank me in the morning." He smiled fondly and departed through the cistern. Mel watched him go, and when Vekel returned with a full mug for her, she hardly even noticed. After a moment, she left the bar too._

* * *

Melrae jolted awake, her hair stuck to her clammy forehead and shoulders. Her breath felt like it was running away from her and she was struggling to catch up. Images of shriveled grey skin and glowing fungi still haunted the edges of her sleepy mind and she tried to blink them away. Karliah stirred, then sat up and stared at her, suddenly alert.

"What?" she asked fiercely, leaning forward to peek out of the tent, then returning, looking puzzled. "What happened?"

Mel blinked, then sighed. "I…" she started, her voice faltering, breaking. "I just had a nightmare, is all. About…" she searched for the words, not wanting to bring the trauma back to life, but found that she couldn't lie. "About the caves. About my family."

Karliah's panic immediately drained from her body to be replaced with sympathy, and she reached forward to cup her friend's face in her palms, looking mournful. "I'm sorry," she said, not knowing what else she could offer in terms of reassurance. She had never had to face what Mel had and she never knew how to comfort her when times such as this came about. She let go of Mel's face and looked down, studying her hands in the dawn light.

Mel waved her away, frowning slightly. "It's alright," she said, staring at the canvas of the tent, searching it for answers, or distraction. She found nothing that could take her mind away from her dream and sat there, silently, with Karliah, as the sun rose sluggishly over the horizon.


	2. dream

It was Fredas, and Mel hated it. Today was her day off, the day that the Guild would loaf around and hang out in the Flagon, the boldest of them taking a dip in the musty water of the cistern as if it were a day on the water in Elsweyr. Now, it was nothing of the sort. She was trekking through the gloomy landscape of High Rock, and she hated it. Her mouth hadn't tasted mead in months and she was parched for more companionship than what Karliah, quiet and reserved, could offer. Mel wanted the loud cries of laughter, the jesting, the tomfoolery of her Guild. After years of living in caves, she found all she ever craved now was excitement, and that's all the Guild ever was.

Karliah noticed her moping as they crossed into Stormhaven and nudged her friend in the stomach, laughing uncertainly. "You're not making for very good company, grumpy," she said. Mel barely acknowledged her with a grunt and shifted her pack on her shoulder. After a moment, the snow elf asked, "are we almost there? My feet are killin' me."

Karliah gazed at her for a moment before turning her attention to the map in her hands. She carefully unfurled it and squinted, following a messy trail of ink with her finger. "We're… here," she muttered, her finger stopping at a point in between two mountains. Mel looked up and around, finally noticing the giant landscapes surrounding them. She found herself lost in the high snowy peaks as she walked, remembering Skyrim. Again.

"Aha!" Karliah said, reaching the end of the trail. "Not too far now, actually." She rolled up the map and tucked it back into her knapsack, looking satisfied. They walked on for a while, eventually coming to a traveling caravan stopped at the side of the road. Four Khajiit milled about, mumbling, setting up shop, and Mel watched them with interest as they approached.

"'Liah," Mel said quietly, as if about to ask her mother for permission, "can we stop and see if they have any sweet rolls?"

Karliah chuckled, turning to face Mel. "Of course," she said kindly, her eyes holding a warm affection. "I know this is hard for you, what with your addiction to sugar, and all." Mel smiled.

* * *

 _Melrae felt the turned Falmer searching for her, their blind eyelids twitching and their mouths dribbling wet with saliva. Ravenous beasts, once elves that looked just like her, elves who were her friends, her family. Her ferocious, ugly brethren groped for her form, yearning to cannibalize her, for she was no longer one of them, and she felt herself screaming. She knew that she was giving her hiding place away, luring them further into what once was her bedroom, now a pillaged mess of memories, regrets. But she just couldn't stop wailing. Her world had been transformed into this horror in front of her, and it wasn't fair. It wasn't right._

 _Suddenly, someone was shaking her._ Get up, get up! _they said, willing her to fight, to defend herself and the last remains of her now sullied childhood. She felt herself stand and start throwing wild punches, her screams transforming into angry cries._ Get away from me! I don't care who you were, I'll kill you! Get away! _In her flurry of violence, someone snatched at her hands and managed to grab a wrist. She panicked: a Falmer had caught her, and was going to kill her. She was going to die. The scene dissolved though, and, instead of a grimacing, mutated creature bearing its nasty teeth, she found herself face to face with Brynjolf, who looked aghast._

 _"I…" Mel said, her eyes searching his, confused. "Wh…where am I?" She was breathless, heaving, and she wasn't even laying down; she was sitting totally upright in bed, one of her arms gripped in Brynjolf's hand, the other hanging in midair, frozen in action. She glanced around and in her post-sleep haze she saw that she was in the cistern, and every head in every bed was turned toward her, watching. She looked back to Brynjolf and his facial features swam in her vision, twisting and morphing until finally, settling where they were supposed to be. She cleared her throat, lowered her free arm, and inclined her head to Brynjolf as if to say, 'give me back my other one'. He let go and grinned sheepishly._

 _"Someone had to keep you from beating the whole Guild up, Lass," he said quietly, his teasing laced with something else. Fear? Pity? No- concern. "You were…" he paused, looking for words. "You were hysterical." He regarded Mel carefully, then muttered, "these nosy brats won't stop starin', you wan' go to the other room?" He jerked his head toward the nearby lockpick room and made a face, shrugging. She looked over his shoulder and saw that Karliah, too, was staring; Mel's stomach dropped, and she turned back to Brynjolf, her face hard. She nodded._

 _Brynjolf reached out and gently took her hand, guiding her out of her bed. The people around them shifted and mumbled at the movement, suddenly busying themselves with going back to bed, complete with theatrical yawning and stretching. As Brynjolf and Mel exited the cistern, Mel turned and sneered at them all before making an 'I'm watching you' gesture with her fingers. She saw Delvin chuckle and felt herself smile. Brynjolf nudged her into the room and shut the door behind them, cutting off her view._

 _Brynjolf led her to a haystack and they both sat, him looking mildly uncomfortable, her looking ashamed. He was the first to speak. "Mel, do you want me to tell you what happened?" he asked._

 _"Not especially," Mel said, her tone bitter. She had a guess as to what had happened and didn't really want to hear it coming out of the mouth of a respected friend. She had already caught Karliah gawking in the cistern and hardly wanted to endure any more emotional gut punches. But, she sighed, and nodded. "Fine. I don't really want to hear it, but I would like to know."_

 _Brynjolf tilted his head to look at her, then glanced away, to the floor. "Well, you started screamin'. Woke everyone up, no one was sure what to do. At first, we thought someone had broken in and started wreakin' havoc or something," he paused, cursing his word choice in his head, but Mel didn't say anything, just looked up at him, waiting. "Karliah went to get up, but she had such a rough day yesterday with the Windhelm job that I implored her to go back to sleep, said I'd see to you myself. 'Course, I don't think anyone wanted to go back to sleep without knowing you were alright. Anyway," he ran a hand through his hair, eyes bouncing from locked chest to locked chest, anywhere but her face, "eventually I told you to wake up, and then you just started punching. Narrowly missed my nose by about a hair." He measured a tiny distance between his thumb and forefinger, looking at her for a laugh. She only gave him a mild smile, not meeting his eyes. He lowered his hand and continued, "And you were yellin' garbled threats, sayin' you were goin' to kill me, so, ah, I grabbed one of your hands, couldn't catch both of 'em 'cause they were goin' so fast, so I settled for one. Then, you woke up."_

 _A long moment passed where the both of them avoided the others' eyes. "I'm sorry," she eventually sighed, her voice low and defeated._

 _"Why are you sorry?" he asked, looking dismayed. When she didn't answer, he moved his arm over her shoulders and leaned in. "Melrae?"_

 _She peeked up at him, her eyes teary. "I've made a damn jester out of myself, Bryn."_

 _"Oh, no you haven't," he scolded lightly, frowning. "Those fools out there may've been ogling you, but they don't know any better, they're all thievin' idiots. Underneath that flawed curiosity, they all have love for you, Mel." He beamed, jostled her a little, willing her to look at him. She did. "You're our lil' snow angel, of course. A little kickin' and screamin' won't scare none of us away. If anything, we welcome it." She didn't say anything, just smiled at him, and they watched each other like that for a while, the dim candlelight of the room flickering against their tired faces._

 _After a while, she whispered, "thanks, Bryn," and he saw that her cheeks were now streaked with tears. He squeezed her and leaned his head against hers, and they both sat like that for so long that they fell asleep. The candlelight twinkled out into darkness. The cistern grew quiet again._

* * *

After Mel had secured herself at least five sweet rolls, much to the dismay of Karliah's coin pouch, they set off. As Mel munched noisily on her treats, Karliah again consulted the map, chewing her bottom lip.

"Now… assuming we haven't lost any more allies outside of Skyrim," she started, and Mel paused in chewing, feeling wistful. "I know a Breton in Wayrest who knew Gallus before the guild, and during. Most of his life, actually. Might know where he is."

Mel polished off the rest of her roll, feeling as if they were fighting a losing battle. "It's like we're just grasping at illusions," she said somberly, reaching to her belt and unhooking a canteen. After taking a swig, she sighed. "That rat Mercer says one thing and the entire world as we know it is swayed in his favor." She felt bitter, remembering the reactions of her friends: the cries of distress, the accusing eyes. So easy to turn on them both.

Karliah stopped walking and turned so promptly to face Mel that the smaller elf startled and almost tripped over her own feet to the ground. Karliah's eyes were distant, and so was her voice, almost to the point of delusion, or paranoia. It was so unlike the Dark Elf to act this way, Mel's previous thoughts about their journey being fruitless became amplified in her head. If her unwavering, confident companion was feeling lost, how was Mel supposed to feel? Karliah grabbed Mel by the shoulders, looked her in the eyes, and asked, "Mel… do you know whether or not he's alive?"

Melrae swallowed, returning her canteen slowly to her belt, and reached out to Karliah's arm, guiding her cautiously off the road. She had been expecting this for quite some time, but was still somehow shocked to hear it actually come out of her friend's mouth. "I can try to find out. To… feel him," she said, her voice soft, tentative. "I haven't… tried. To… to feel anyone since…" She paused, shook her head, some of her wild white locks breaking away from the thick plait winding down her back. Karliah looked away, muttering for her, "…Bryn."

 _"Why can't I do this?" Mel was shouting, pacing back and forth in their room at the inn, her fists clenched at her sides, tears running down her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away as quickly as they came, her jaw clenched. Karliah watched helplessly from the bed as Mel stalked across the room and back. Someone knocked hard on the opposite wall and Mel stopped pacing to shout, "do you_ mind _?!" She stood there for quite a long while, seething, her face red with fury. Then, as if by magic, she crumpled to the floor, delicate as a paper bird. Karliah moved down to hold her, and Mel sobbed into her shoulder. "Why can't I do this?"_

"I could try, though," Mel said through the unforgiving fog of memory. "I could try."

And so, they sat in the grass beside the road and Mel closed her eyes, focusing on Gallus's image, his familiar roguish smile and towering figure. She remembered how he had greeted her when she first arrived, unkempt and muddied from staying in the Ratways for the past Sun's Height. Sun's Height—her birth month. The Apprentice.

She had stumbled into the Flagon, looking distinctly confused, her hair tangled and dark from dirt, and Gallus had crossed in a quick jog to get to her, the other members watching inquisitively from the bar.

 _Hello, little snow elf_ , Gallus had said, recognizing her kind despite the filth adorning her features, his voice gentle, almost fatherly. _Would you like to stay here with us?_

Sitting there in the grass of this unfamiliar country of High Rock, Mel could certainly feel him. His presence came like a great wave of ocean water, clashing into her consciousness. His existence was as sure as the sun was luminous. Her eyes ripped open and she stared at Karliah, her heart racing. She realized she was smiling. The Dark Elf grinned back, and Mel could hear a sob hitching in her throat.

"He's alive?" Karliah choked, giving a wet laugh. " _He's alive_."


	3. trouble

**A/N:** Hiya, here's a longer chapter! A lot more background as to what went down with the TG, what happened between Brynjolf and Mel, etc. The story is finally in real motion :~) As always, any and all feedback is welcome. I own none of this except my own original characters (thus far, Melrae, Pau, and Jinx).

* * *

The sun blazed high over the city of Wayrest. The marketplace bustled beneath the shadow of an elaborate, towering cathedral, its stained-glass windows depicting each of the nine Divines in full, bright swaths of color.

Two elves entered the gates, hand in hand, their packs hanging loosely off their shoulders, canteens jangling noisily at their sides. Many of the civilians were caught staring, eyes skipping back and forth between them both, trying to figure out which oddity to gawk at first. An older woman sat in her market stand, frozen in showing off a gold necklace to a customer, the jewelry hanging limply from her hand as her eyes following the newcomers; her customer, a shabby looking Khajiit, watched the girls, too. Not with shock or awe, but with interest, familiarity.

"He told me about Paurelis all the time," Karliah was saying quietly as they crossed the marketplace, neither of them noticing the staring of others around them because they were, by now, all too used to it. "Like he was a brother, or something. He was so fond of him. I'm hoping he'll meet with us and that he'll understand." They approached a set of double doors and looked up; a dilapidated wooden sign boasted the words 'The Noble Magpie'. "This is it," said Karliah, reaching out to push open the doors to the tavern.

They were greeted first by raucous laughter and shouting, then by a sudden lull. Melrae glanced around, her hand falling from Karliah's to her side. Every person in the bar had their eyes trained on the two women, their bodies suspended in the middle of their previous actions. Only the man behind the bar was not looking, instead scrubbing down a large bottle of liquor. When he was finished, he set it down hard on the bar, so hard Mel was surprised it hadn't shattered, and he looked up. Not at the elves, but around at his patrons.

"Ye better knock it off and stop scaring customers away," he said roughly, his voice gruff and craggy, like a grouping of stones being mashed together repeatedly. "First the damn cat, now two perfectly innocent Elvish women. Ye have no shame." The bar patrons began to mutter and break their eyes away reluctantly from the spectacle at their door, returning to their forgotten mead or hunks of bread. Karliah grabbed Mel's hand and dragged her through the renewed din of glasses clanking and quiet conversation, toward the barman, who was now watching them with a certain amount of skepticism. Despite his defense of their kind, he still seemed suspicious, apprehensive. Perhaps it just came with the territory.

When they reached the back of the tavern, Karliah plunked down on a stool and leaned across the bar toward the man, who cocked his head slightly toward her, his demeanor wary. "Aye? What is it, young lass? I don't see your kind—either of your kind," he corrected, nodding at Mel, who smiled bashfully, "in these parts very often."

Karliah smiled politely. "We're looking for someone," she said, "by the name of Paurelis Valtitte."

A look of amusement flashed in the man's eyes and he looked utterly pleased with himself as he whispered, his voice low with something akin to delight, "well, yank m' tail an' call me Akatosh, that'd be me." Karliah blinked, reclining slightly back on the stool, her face suddenly blank. The man, Paurelis, nodded solemnly, as if to say, 'yes, you heard that right.' She leaned in again, her mouth twisting back into a smile.

"We're here to ask you about Gallus, Paurelis," she said quietly. Her voice upon speaking his name had a sort of wistful edge to it, and her eyes, despite her smile, had lost a slight amount of their shine.

Melrae watched as Paurelis leaned back and let out a low whistle before his face cracked into a toothy grin. She saw that he had a gap between his two front teeth, an endearing feature she wouldn't have expected on a man of his stature. His hair sprouted wildly from his head and curved along the sides of his face to his chin, never breaking, all connected, as if his hair were a roaring flame, storming along a wide trail of oil.

"Please," he said genially, "call me Pau."

"Pau," Karliah said, nodding, her facial features strained; Mel could recognize the Dark Elf's impatience.

"Gallus…," said Pau, his eyes breaking from Karliah and drifting off to a space over her shoulder. "How is that troublemaker?" He glanced back at her, his eyes expectant, almost hungry. How long had it been since he had last seen Gallus? Melrae felt something stir in the hollow of her stomach, a familiar feeling. Missing someone. Not knowing where they were, or how they were. Hoping to Talos that they were still alive, out there somewhere. She empathized with Pau so deeply she felt as if she knew him, as if they shared something.

"Well," Karliah shifted uneasily in her seat. Pau's smile flickered, then went out as the silence grew. Karliah opened her mouth to finally say something else, but it was Mel who spoke.

"He's missing, Pau," she said, hoping Karliah's lackluster response hadn't made his heart leap thinking that Gallus had died. "We were hoping that you might… know where he could've gone."

Paurelis jerked his head away, his face abruptly plagued with gloom. He searched the bar in front of him, his eyes frantic, confused. He looked back up and met Melrae's gaze. His eyes were a startling, bright grey-blue, like the sky right after rain. She was surprised she hadn't noticed earlier. "Small one," he addressed her, his tone soft, "I ain't seen Gallus in near ten years." He closed his mouth, opened it again as if to continue, then closed it again. Karliah visibly slumped in her seat, the jovial energy from minutes before draining right out of her.

Melrae, however, maintained a careful smile. "That's alright, Pau," she said. "We just need to know what he was like… where he would go, who he knew. Perhaps why he would leave. You knew him, you were close to him—he never stopped talking about you," she added, watching Pau for a reaction and seeing that his face brightened a bit. "I think you might know something about him that we don't. Perhaps many… somethings," she finished awkwardly.

Pau stood there for a moment, his hulking figure looking rather small, and then he nodded solemnly. "Come on," he said, gesturing to a door behind the bar. "Let's talk in private, aye? I'll get someone to watch the bar while I'm gone."

* * *

Brynjolf was hunched over the bar, his long hair partly resting inside his mug of mead. Vekel the Man stood opposite, looking down at him, his arms crossed in front of his chest. He was frowning and shaking his head.

"You know, Bryn," he said loudly, "all this drinking's goin' a' land you in an early grave, you hear me?" When the red-headed lad didn't look up, Vekel clocked him lightly on the top of the head, causing him to briefly stir, bleary-eyed and drooling. "If not by the drink, then by me, 'cause you're always makin' a damn mess 'round here an', quite frankly, I've grown sick of it."

Brynjolf snorted, then muttered wetly, "aye, well, I invite you to it, then, Vek." Vekel's frown deepened at this sentiment and he turned away, snatching a rag from his apron and busying himself by polishing shelves. The vague, sick sort of desire present in Brynjolf's voice made Vekel feel a bit uneasy.

It had been a few months since the Gallus incident, and Vekel himself was not convinced that it was over. When Karliah and Mel had fled, those two elves as different from each other as night and day, he had watched them go with a feeling of regret, uncertainty. While others had pushed them out, almost frothing at the mouth like maddened beasts, cradling Mercer Fray's word as law, Vekel had yearned to stop them, or, at the very least, to join them. Now, he regarded Brynjolf as if looking at himself from months-past: a man who didn't agree with their departure, a man full to the brim with remorse.

After a moment, Vekel said, "why haven't you looked for her yet, Bryn?" When the other man didn't answer, Vekel turned around to face him. Instead of seeing Brynjolf again laying against the bar, weighed down with drunkenness, he was met with the bloodshot eyes of a man in anguish. When Brynjolf didn't immediately answer, Vekel leaned nearer to him and, his palms flat on the bar, said, "Melrae," thinking perhaps her name would jerk him at least partially out of his murky, drunken fog.

At this, Brynjolf smiled wistfully, his eyes dropping to his mug of mead. Suddenly, he swiped his arm across the bar and the mug flew across the room, slamming against a wall and shattering. His voice sounded strangled as he replied, "because I don't deserve to find her."

* * *

They sat in the bar's backroom, Karliah and Mel perched at a small table, Pau standing before them, his hands clasped behind his back. For such a severe looking man, he seemed to have shrunken tenfold since they first met him.

"The thing ye girls need to know about ole' Gallus," Pau began after a long moment of silence, startling Mel in the process, "is that he was always searchin' for trouble." Karliah smirked and Pau caught her eyes with his own, questioning gaze. "Aye?"

"Well, of course he is. He's the leader of the Thieves Guild," Karliah explained.

When she said it, he whooped and hollered with an odd sort of glee. "I knew it!" he said. "When we was young, I bet him ten gold pieces he'd pull some sort o' malarkey like that. I won!"

Karliah and Mel shared a laugh with him before the tone turned more solemn.

"Let's see," Pau said, pacing. "We was always hangin' 'round in Windhelm, if ye can believe it. He just loved the snow there, an' he also had some sort o' vigilante kick goin'. He'd take me through the Gray Quarter and we'd just talk to the elves for hours. Sometimes he'd slip 'em coin." Mel glanced over at Karliah and saw a look on her face that she couldn't quite place. Pau noticed too and stopped walking, regarding Karliah with a small smile on his lips.

Karliah looked dazed, as if she had just seen a ghost; Melrae supposed she kind of had. "I, ah," Karliah started, a grin teasing at her lips. "That's how we met, actually," she said, avoiding the eyes of both her comrades and instead staring down at her lap, a slight blush blooming on her cheeks. Melrae involuntarily tittered with laughter, and Pau outright guffawed, his large belly shaking.

"Ah, well, o' course he did," Pau said lightly, his eyes bright. "Always knew he'd find himself a right stunnin' broad, I'm not surprised that's how he did it. The man was always about charity and goodwill. Despite bein' a criminal, he was always fighting for the good of Tamriel."

The room's energy crackled with the presence of fond memories, all three individuals linked by one being. Pau told story after story of he and Gallus's youth together, his hands moving animatedly as he told them about their adventures across Skyrim. He even mimicked Gallus's deep voice when he could, sending the girls into fits of laughter. When his stories began to tilt toward the direction of Riften, his tone of voice turned frigid. As he finished up a tale about their bumpy horse ride from Whiterun to The Rift, Pau's eyes grew shadowy.

"Well, then he met that ole' weasel, Mercer Frey. A right prick, I tell ye. Gallus cut contact with me not soon after," he said, his voice brimming with disdain. Karliah and Mel exchanged a curious look, and Pau saw it, snorting. "You lot know him too, aye?"

"Yes," said Mel, furrowing her brows. "He's the one who told us Gallus was dead."

The room seemed to constrict, the atmosphere growing thick. Pau crossed the room in one quick stride and was kneeling in front of Mel in a second. "Lass," he said carefully, " _what_ did you say?"

Melrae felt guilty and looked away. He had been telling them so much about Gallus, and they had barely even told him the full truth behind why they were there. She took in an unsteady breath and sat back in her seat. "You might wanna sit down, Pau," she said quietly, "I think it's our turn to tell a story."

Pau nodded and found a chair in the corner of the room, dragged it over to them. He leaned toward Mel, his breathing shallow. "Go on," he said. Melrae nodded and looked away, reluctantly recalling that day five months past.

 _It was a Turdas. Brynjolf and Melrae had been arm-wrestling, and he had been letting her win, though he refused to admit it. "Oh, c'mon, Bryn," Mel was saying through gritted teeth, her arm shaking with effort. "I know a tiny Falmer like me is no match to a big old Nord such as yourself, just pin me already," she grinned wide, "get it over with."_

" _Hey, I'm not old!" Brynjolf exclaimed, chortling. He gripped her small hand tight in his, pressing down slightly to keep up his half-hearted façade of making it seem like he was struggling, too. "I'm only a ripe 25. A spritely young lad if I do say so myself." He and Mel laughed together, and when their smiling eyes met, Brynjolf felt his muscles relax, too much. Mel took the moment of distraction to pin his hand to the table. She cackled triumphantly at his look of shock._

" _Aha, there! I actually won, without your help," she said happily, releasing his hand._

" _Sure, with trickery and deceit rather than strength," he retorted, though he was still chuckling as he said it._

" _And who says that isn't strength, you silly thief?" Mel shot back, her uncontrolled hair fraying out in all directions, her eyes glowing with mirth._

" _You caught me there, Lass," he had muttered, and was about to say something else when a door slammed, and Mercer Frey's grating voice cut through the merry din of sound in the Flagon._

"I had never liked him. Naturally," Mel admitted quietly to Pau, who nodded in understanding, smiling. "He was so… harsh. He had an air about him, like someone who coveted only power and nothing else… like it was his life blood. That night, he came barging into the Flagon, was screaming about how 'there has been a betrayal among us!'" Melrae scoffed, shook her head. "Sure, there was. Anyway, he came in, covered in muck, his hair a right mess, and I saw he had Karliah's cloak gripped in his hand, yanking her along toward us, choking her. And he said, 'your friend here has killed our leader. She has killed Gallus.'" Mel's eyes flickered with anger and she laughed mirthlessly. "He threw her to the floor," she said, and her voice began to crack. "Karliah was beaten to hell, he had done quite a number on her. I watched him as he talked, but nothing registered. All I could hear were my friends, everyone around me, muttering in bewilderment and… and agreement. They didn't question it at all." Melrae paused and a rogue sob escaped her mouth. She clapped a hand to her lips and, her voice muffled, gasped, "I'm sorry," closing her eyes.

Karliah reached out to touch her shoulder and said, "It's alright, little one, I'll tell the rest." Pau looked stunned but gestured for Karliah to take the reins and continue, leaning back in his chair and letting out a deep breath. "Mercer had found me in my damn bedroom, not in the act of killing Gallus. I had been in there searching through my things all day, because Gallus had been missing for weeks. I was trying to find any correspondence that would tell me where he had gone. Everyone else was in the bar, so when Mercer came in, he gagged me really quick with those fiendish little hands of his and almost beat the life out of me." She shuddered, remembering. "Just this unbridled _rage_ in his dark, dark eyes. He said, 'you, elf, will trouble me no longer'. Then he pulled me into the Flagon, in front of everyone I knew and trusted. He told them I killed Gallus, and they believed his disgusting, honeyed words. Even Brynjolf," Karliah muttered this last part and gripped Mel's shoulder. "Brynjolf was Melrae's best friend, Pau," she explained, lifting her hand away and setting it in her lap. "Since she got there, they did everything together. That Nord was so level-headed, oddly wise for his age. But… he believed Mercer too."

"That's why I left with 'Liah," Mel piped up, her eyes misty as she fixed Pau with a stare, willing herself to stop crying. Pau watched her with sympathy, even reached out to envelope her small hand in both of his big ones. "If Bryn could turn so quickly, there was no hope for the Guild. No hope for me, either, because _I_ didn't believe Mercer. I don't know what bloody _spell_ he had them under, but I wasn't swayed by it. I stood and said, 'no, she didn't' so loudly and surely, I thought, perhaps, I had influenced everyone back to our side. After all, Mercer had no proof. But Brynjolf stood too, and he fixed me with a look I'll never forget, I… can't. It was…," she wept, "…hate."

No one spoke for a long time after that. Pau marinated in the new information, and Karliah and Mel drowned in the memory. They all sat in silence until, finally, Pau relinquished Mel's hand and stood.

"Well, we better find him," Pau said, his voice set. "I'm not letting a slimy creature like Frey win this one."

Before either of the elves could say anything in reply, Mel felt something stir in her chest, at first faint, but then—

She shrieked, her hands flying to her head, groping at her hair. Her eyes rolled to reveal the whites and her body slid out of the chair, but Pau was quick enough to catch her. He and Karliah watched as Mel trembled and gagged, rocking her on the floor and whispering spiritless reassurances.

* * *

" _Gallus Desidenius," said a distant voice, so complex and foreign Mel was surprised she could understand it. She felt, vaguely, as if it were a different language. "You have been chosen."_

 _Mel was confused, but then she found that she could walk, somehow existing in this vision as a corporeal entity. She turned, her eyes scanning for details of the space she was in, and instantly, she saw Gallus. He was sitting against a far wall, his wrists in chains, his head lolled to the side. His breathing came out ragged and when he tried to speak, blood gurgled out of his mouth in wet bubbles, dribbling down his chin. Mel wanted to scream at the sight of him: her mentor and friend, a prisoner. Tortured. But_ where _?_

 _Just then, Gallus's darkened head moved, tilted up. Melrae watched him, curiously approaching as she did so, but then he looked up. He looked up and met her eyes, unwavering. She reeled back and twisted around, looking behind her for someone else. No one was there but them. She turned back and saw that Gallus was smiling weakly. He said nothing, just looked at her. She felt her eyes burning._

 _A disembodied voice, the same from before, sniggered from somewhere far away. "No one can save you," it said ruthlessly, its voice razor-sharp and jagged. Then it whispered, "not even the little Falmer."_

 _Melrae felt her body constricting suddenly, her skin shrinking around her bones and muscles. It was agonizing. She felt her skin losing its luster, wrinkling rapidly, greying. Her vision blurred, and Gallus began to disappear. Then, so did everything else. She reached up and clawed at her eyes, her screams punctuated by the cruel cackles of the voice. "I see your nightmares, Snow Elf," it said, its voice almost serpentine. "I see your_ mind _."_

 _Melrae writhed in her new form, blindly groping at air, her mouth wide open but no sound coming out. She was crying, tears leaking out from her shriveled eyelids. "Gallus—" she managed to squeak, before her legs gave and she fell to the wet earth. The voice's laughter echoed in her head, stinging her as if her entire body was full of cuts. "Gallus," she said, now to no one, only the empty void._

* * *

Melrae bolted upright and conked heads with Karliah, who yelled out in pain, her hands flying away from the smaller elf as if she had been burned. Pau leaned down and lifted Mel up into her chair, as if handling a fragile cloth doll, and wiped at her face with a rag.

"Didn't know you were a psychic," he muttered as he adjusted her limp body in her seat. Karliah stared at him open-mouthed, surprised at his accuracy. For all he knew, Mel could have been having a fit of some kind, not a vision. "Yes, Dark Elf, I'm familiar with the arcana," he said without looking at her, his voice weary, smiling wanly. "As is Gallus." Karliah swallowed, nodded ambiguously, and shakily approached her own chair, sitting down.

Melrae's breathing had steadied, but tears were still falling down her face. She took in a gulp of air and turned, fixing Karliah with a fiery stare. "He's being held somewhere," she rasped, her throat raw, "by daedra."


	4. friends

The world was still. The night shrouded a city that bustled and churned with energy in the daytime, and hushed it gently, like a mother laying a blanket over her fussy child. Melrae found herself, on this particular night, outside on the roof of the Magpie, writing a letter. The inn had a messenger bird available, and it was there with her, perched on her shoulder. As she was finishing up, she heard a faint rustle from below. She peered around, but saw nothing. Her fingers quickly folded up the letter anyway, and she reached for the bird, who let out a reluctant chirp as she grasped it gently it in her hand. She gave it a look as if to say, 'give me a break', and its beak popped open on cue. Maybe the trick to getting the bird to cooperate was to get angry with it. She tucked the letter in, making sure it was positioned so the address scrawled on the outside could be easily seen- _The Ragged Flagon,_ _Riften_ -and released the bird. It fluttered off violently into the air and away, and Mel wondered briefly if it could even make it farther than the border.

Two days went past before Karliah and Mel decided it was time to leave. They weren't altogether sure where they were going, but the next capital seemed to be the place. Pau mentioned that maybe those citizens could supply them with direction, as it was overcrowded with mages with connections to the College. The final night, Mel sat out on the roof again. Her eyes turned up to the sky, her knees folded up to her chin. Constellations freckled an inky blue, adorning Tamriel with twinkly jewels. The small elf felt strangely at peace here, alone, watching the sky glitter. She hadn't been alone like this in quite some time. It felt like hours had passed with her sitting outside, staring out into the universe.

As she gazed up into the night, her eyes weighty under the yearning for sleep, she couldn't help but eventually look for a familiar constellation she had been avoiding: The Thief. It was habit by now, one she was trying and failing to break. Upon finding it, her mind instantly brimmed with memory, nearly overflowing with it, and she had to make a conscious effort to stifle the nostalgia by shifting her eyes to other star patterns instead. In this secluded moment, she would try not to focus on the past, for on every other day, its persistent ghost would haunt her, regardless of whether or not she invited the specter in.

The previous days' events rolled through her mind, then, in disjointed chunks: Karliah and her momentary, but startlingly real, desperation; meeting the kindly Pau; seeing Gallus, battered but alive, and him seeing her. It felt as if in just a short twenty four hours her life had metamorphosed from a confused caterpillar to an even more confused butterfly.

Her ears perked up as she heard Karliah stir from within their room, and she turned to peek inside. Her companion merely smacked her lips, yawned, and flipped to lay on her other side. Mel reached forward and gently pulled the window shut. She watched her friend momentarily, the serenity on her face one expression Mel was sure she wouldn't see again anytime soon.

Her head twisted back around, and her eyes returned to the city laid out in front of her. For all of its ethnocentric Bretons, Wayrest certainly was beautiful. The Divine's cathedral towered over everything else like a benevolent God monitoring its creation, protecting it from danger. The ground around the market was well-worn, its rickety groupings of stalls all loved to the point of severe deterioration. Compact, small housing units lined the street behind the city center, smashed together in rows, its hasty design looking as if a child had drawn it, garish colors included.

Mel's mouth fell open into a comically wide yawn and she wondered fleetingly if she should return to her room, when she spotted, again, sudden, darting movement from below. She instinctively shrunk back from the edge of the roof and watched, eyes alert.

A Khajiit was walking along the main path through the city. Mel could see that his face was long and rather weather-beaten. She had an idea flit through her mind that this cat had never slept in his life, for he certainly looked it. His fur was dark, darker than she had ever seen in his kind. He had a certain assuredness to his movements, as if he were used to making no sound. With a jolt of realization, Mel thought, _as if he were used to sneaking_. Even if she wasn't a thief herself, she could recognize one as easily as she could identify eye color, or clothing. Her curiosity peaked as the dark cat paused at the entrance of the cathedral, tapping his feet rhythmically on the ground for a few minutes, peering through the windowed doors into the sacred space within. Then, as if sensing her presence, or perhaps he had seen her and known she was there the whole time, he turned and gazed up at her. A smile curved up at the corners of his black lips.

"Hello, snowy star," he called, raising his hand to wave at her. She inched carefully toward the edge of the rooftop, her fingertips fluttering inconspicuously near her side, hovering over a knife strapped to her hip, as if the fellow could even get to her from that far away. The cat's smile seemed to widen as he said to her, "a cautious one. J'ara understands."

Melrae stared at him questioningly, and found that her hand fell immediately from its guarded position at her side. J'ara stepped away from the cathedral, toward her, and once he reached the side of the inn in a few graceful strides, he extended a hand up to her.

"I sense your troubles," he said, his voice especially kind and gentle when he was up close. "I would like to show you something that could, perhaps, help."

His hand hung in the air for her, an invitation. Mel's restless mind had been given a reason to stay awake, one that could, if his promise were true, benefit her later in her quest. Despite her better judgment, the voice of a certain red-headed delinquent echoing in her mind ("and watched out for those cursedly clever cats, especially"), she shuffled forward, leaned over the edge, and took J'ara's hand.

As the Khajiit gingerly assisted in bringing her down from the roof to the ground, Mel shook the thoughts of Brynjolf out of her head, his voice ringing and persistent, like water trapped in her ears. Once she was standing, she met the eyes of the feline stranger. The moon clothed the both of them in a magnificent white light. She noticed a long, deep scar gleaming on his wide nose, the gash forming a sort of rift in the middle of his face. It could've made him look dangerous or violent, but she found, oddly, that it didn't make her feel that way. He looked rather spry, really, and certainly younger than most of the peddlers she saw on the side of the road. He had a smooth bow balanced against his back and his tunic looked raggedy.

"Hello," J'ara said again, his large green eyes set upon Melrae with an almost familiar sense of fondness. "What is your name, then, snowy star?"

"My name is Melrae," she supplied, her voice unexpectedly hoarse and even more quiet. J'ara heard her just fine, though. She presumed he could hear almost anything.

"Ah," he said, his expression thoughtful. "I suspect your name means something beautiful or introspective, such as 'moonlight walker' or…" he chuckled, looked away, and then, "…noiseless thief," his eyes coming right back to her, his pupils big.

Mel didn't quite know what to say to this, so, instead of mulling over it and wasting time, she asked, "how did you know about my affiliations?"

The dark Khajiit chuckled deep from within his throat and he moved his hand to her back, guiding her away from the inn, toward that hulking cathedral looming over them. "J'ara is wise, wise beyond his years," he said, though his tone was light with jest. They reached the cathedral doors and he tilted his head to look down at Mel, dropping his arm away from her. "Or, perhaps, J'ara is in a Thieves Guild, too." He winked, his long whiskers sparkling mischievously in the moonlight, and he reached out to push open the doors for her.

The inside of the building was impossibly more magisterial than the outside. Exquisite, dainty chandeliers swung from the high ceiling, and the moon shone in through the stained-glass depictions of the Divines, bathing the floor and walls with a chaotic mix of color. Melrae must have looked quite stunned, because J'ara gave her shoulder a slight shake.

"Upstairs," he whispered carefully, taking her hand and leading them to the back of the cathedral, his steps calculated, attentive.

Mel wasn't sure what it was about this peculiar Khajiit, but she felt like she could trust him totally and unconditionally, like she knew him. Maybe that's what being in a guild was about; you could make connections around the world and it would always be easy to do because of your shared customs or knowledge. As they ascended the stairs to the cathedral's tower, Mel could sense her spirit lifting, as though drawn to something, wanting to know everything this J'ara could teach her here on this silent night.

When they reached the top, a fenced but windowless spire that look out upon nearly the whole of Stormhaven, Mel was in such awe she could hardly settle on one place to look at. After a moment, J'ara reached and tilted Mel's face to the North. Her admiring gaze followed and fell on a notably large structure in the distance. J'ara moved his arm away from her face to point his finger in its direction. She saw that he had a woven bracelet wrapped loosely around his wrist and wondered, briefly, who had made it for him.

"That is the Mages College," he said. He lowered his arm and leaned back, watching her. "Your troubles are complex. You should go straight there, seek their help."

Melrae found herself entranced by the College's intimidating shape. She could see, even from this far away, the raw, magical energy twisting and curling around the structure like smoke. "It's…" Mel began, but found that she had no words to finish the thought.

"Yes," J'ara replied faintly. "It is."

All at once realizing the implication of his previous statements, Mel whirled around, her eyes almost glowing in the twilight. She fixed J'ara with a stare and he noticed that it made him feel quite scared. "How do you know of my troubles, J'ara?" she asked sharply, her eyes unwavering, crackling with an energy that he sensed to be potential danger. J'ara found, for the first time that night, that his voice was struggling to come out of his mouth, nervousness seemingly encasing him in stone.

"Well," he started after a beat, reaching up to anxiously rub the back of his neck. "J'ara, you see… is very good at eavesdropping," he finished, his confession unavoidable, his words coming out in a rush. Instead of reacting with anger, as he was expecting, Mel laughed.

"At least you're being truthful," she said, spinning away from him and looking out over the land once more. She grasped the top of the fence and leaned out into the night air. She felt unstoppable up there on the tower, the air fast and cool that high up.

They stood in comfortable silence for a long moment before J'ara spoke up. "How is it that a perfectly healthy Falmer elf is alive and wandering about in this day and age?" he asked, observing her with unconcealed curiosity. She sighed, and he mistook it for annoyance. "I did not mean to offend," he said quickly, "not like those meddlesome townsfolk."

Melrae turned to face him fully, and reached out to touch his arm with the tender lithesomeness of a fairy. "I'm not mad at you," she explained. "I simply don't like to talk about it. I'll make a long tale very short for you and say that I escaped before I could be corrupted."

J'ara's brow shot up in involuntary surprise. "You are very fast, then," he said bluntly. She laughed, looking away.

"I guess so," she said.

* * *

Later on in the night, Mel found herself seated at a table in the Magpie across from J'ara. They had been talking for hours. She told him all about the betrayal of her Guild and the disappearance of Gallus, and he had sat through it, nodding and gasping when appropriate. She found herself wanting to bring him with them on their journey, if not for his agility and grace, then for entertainment. He was so strange and spoke so thoughtfully, she hung on nearly every word that came out of his mouth, as if it were a nectar she could bottle and keep for the future. It wasn't at all infatuation; she had just met someone who she connected with almost to the level of her soul.

At one point during dawn, she began to talk about Brynjolf. She found that she couldn't help it.

"He's a stubborn spitfire of a Nord," she had said after a particularly long recounting of one of their adventures into Solitude, where they had stolen something from a prosperous family's house. She had been unaware of the trip's purpose, naively, and when they had gotten to the front door, he had pulled out a lockpick. She'd swatted at him violently and stalked off, only to return minutes later, resigned and already bored. _Fine_ , she had said reluctantly, _but I_ won't _help._ Holding her mug of warm cider in her hands, Mel now looked down into its amber liquid as though looking into the past. "Always challenging me," she muttered distantly.

J'ara smiled. "It sounds like you are sweet on this Brynjolf, snowy star Melrae," he said tenderly. Her face shot up from her drink and she fixed him with a confused stare. He chuckled and shrugged. "J'ara knows love, and it flits about your every word like a hummingbird. I can hear it." He tugged on one of his floppy, pierced ears and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not…" Melrae began, ready to argue, but found she had no real defense. After a moment, she said, defeated, "I guess you're right," for it wasn't important how she did or did not feel about her friend. A friend he was no longer. "It doesn't matter," she said, her voice heavy, and she returned her drowsy gaze to the swirling cider in her cup.

J'ara frowned and reached out, grabbing Melrae's wrist lightly. "Does not matter?" he repeated, his tone that of disbelief. He leaned across the table to catch her eyes with his, and she obliged, looking at him. "You have told me he has betrayed you, yes. But J'ara is not entirely convinced it was under his control, and you should not be, either."

Melrae squinted at him. "What… what do you mean?" she asked.

He released her wrist but stayed leaning into her, his voice suddenly hushed. "You say there are Daedra involved in this, correct?" She nodded. "Then how is it so far-fetched to think that they had a hand in convincing your friends to believe the ugly grey rat?" Mel would have laughed at his name for Mercer, had she not been shocked to silence. The Khajiit's argument was plausible, if not downright obvious.

She stared at him, the implication of his words slowly boring into her chest, and then, feeling suddenly free of a terrible weight she didn't know she had been carrying, she collapsed against the table and cried.

In the morning, J'ara departed. "I would come with you," he said, cupping Mel's hands in his, looking mournful, "but I have my own troubles to pursue." She had watched him walk out through the tavern doors, the rising sun outside making his slim outline gleam around the edges like a halo, before the doors swung back in and he was gone.

* * *

An hour later, Mel woke up with her face laid awkwardly against the table, drool leaking out of her mouth. She sat up quickly and glanced around; the bar was still relatively empty, and the sun outside was still only peeking shyly over the horizon. Woefully, she stood, her muscles straining from the inelegant position she had taken while napping. Pau nodded at her from the bar, a fresh rag in his hand. "Aye, little one," he called jauntily from across the room, "ye get enough shut eye?"

She only grimaced at him in response and walked toward the stairs, reaching up to pull away the knot of rope holding her braid in place. As she crested the top stair onto the second floor, she was met with Karliah's form exiting their room at the same time and they nearly bumped into each other.

"Hey, where have you been?" Karliah asked once she had let Mel off the stair and into the hall.

"Oh," Mel said, unraveling her plait with care. "I met a Khajiit from the Tambury Thieves Guild," she paused to fluff her hair out over her shoulders and tucked the rope into her utility belt, "his name was J'ara."

A flicker of recognition shone in the Dark Elf's eyes. "J'ara?" she said, to which Mel nodded. "Delvin's traded some things with him before! Really dark guy, big gnarly scar on his nose?" Mel nodded again. "Small world," Karliah muttered. They both ruminated briefly on the mention of Delvin, Melrae feeling rather blue about it before remembering what J'ara had said to her earlier.

"Karliah, I have to tell you about something J'ara told me," she said, to which Karliah gestured for them to go to the room. Once they were inside, she nudged the door shut with her boot, and sat down on the small bed. Mel sat down with her. "He mentioned lots of helpful things about our situation, which I told him all about, but the one thought he had was that the members of the Guild that turned on us may've been bewitched or... something." Mel watched Karliah for a reaction, but when nothing presented itself, she said uncertainly, "Karliah?"

The Dark Elf sighed and broke eye contact, looking to the floor. "Listen, Mel," she started, her voice sorrowful, "I get that what happened with Brynjolf hurt you but… Daedra aren't usually that generous. Whatever it needs Gallus for—I don't think they would give Mercer the power of persuasion or whatever you think it is, in order to turn the others against me. Us. He was probably only promised an end reward, like ultimate power, or whatever it is man asks of daedra. I… I think entertaining the idea might only make it all worse for you in the end."

Melrae frowned, her every thought overlapping in her head, each scrambling for attention over the others. She opened her mouth and found that, instead of an argument, the words, "we should get ready to go," came out instead. Karliah, only nodded, not asking where they were going, her face forlorn. Mel stood and exited the room, her fingers in her hair, her mind elsewhere.

* * *

Brynjolf awoke with his face laid awkwardly against Vekel's bar, alcohol-soaked hair splayed haphazardly across his forehead. Vekel watched him, scowling. Only an hour before, the idiot had 'accidentally' spilled an entire mug of good Black-Briar Mead all over himself, promptly dropped the mug onto his own head, and knocked himself out cold. The Nord opposite had been waiting for him to awaken ever since, looking upon him with distinct disdain as he did so. There was no hope for the man and, more unfortunately, no hope for the guild. Since Gallus had gone and Mercer had all-too-eagerly taken over, their business had taken a nosedive. The previous night, old Delvin Mallory had convinced himself, and a fair number of others, that it was a curse.

"Sure it is, Delvin, and I'm Sheogorath," Brynjolf had slurred, lifting himself up from his stool to dance gawkily for his superior, apparently acting out an impression of the Prince of Madness. He looked rather like a broken marionette, though.

Instead of laughing, Delvin had grown inflamed with anger, stood, pointed with a tremulous finger, and cried, "'at's the exact bad luck we don' need more of, you childish moron! _Sit down_!"

Now, Vekel stood in the debris from the previous night, watching as Brynjolf lazily stirred. "You're a goddamn mess," Vekel said immediately, to which the other man's cloudy eyes only squinted. He muttered something unintelligible and went to stand, but instantly lost balance. His arm shot out to the bar and he grabbed it just in time, breathing heavily.

"You're right," he mumbled thickly, holding himself upright. "As always, Vek, you are the man of the hour with your admirable sense of logic." Vekel smiled despite himself.

"How many times do I have to mention it to you to get you to actually do it?" Vekel asked. Brynjolf didn't answer and ran a hand through his hair. When it came back sticky and mildly wet, he looked horrified.

"Perhaps this is the last time," he said hastily, before hurrying off out of the bar. Vekel sighed and, reaching into his pocket, fished out a small, crinkled letter. On it was only one scrawled question and an initial.

 _Is he okay?_

 _\- M_

He reached into his other pocket for a sharpened piece of charcoal and scribbled his lie onto a napkin:

 _Yes._

 **A/N:** Hiya, just here to note, especially with this chapter, that I am not going to be focusing all too hard on canon modes of communication, geography, etc. I'm mostly borrowing characters and plot points from the game, not focusing too hard on other specifics or researching all too deeply into the geography of High Rock. Apologies for the mild filler chapter, more is coming next chapter as the journey 'finally' seems to begin. Thanks for reading!


	5. reunion

**A/N:** Hiya, sorry for the kind of late update. I ran into a wall with this story for a week or so, but I'm back. :~) As always, all feedback is welcome and appreciated. A reminder as we get deeper into the complexities of the story, I'm really only borrowing bits from Elder Scrolls lore and spinning my own tale. Many parts of this fanfiction are probably flawed in lieu of the true lore, especially in this chapter.

* * *

The light touch of someone's hands sauntered vaguely into something like Melrae's memory, stirring her from sleep. When she opened her eyes, she found that she sat in a field of sun-soaked wildflowers, and her mother sat with her. The elder Falmer, Lilia, smiled tenderly at her daughter, her pale face looking rather youthful and glowy in the sunlight. When she had been alive, she had never seen true sun, for she had never once gone outside. It was their culture to reside in caves, to align themselves with the dripping stalactites and fungi rather than nature's gift of stars. The only light they ever received was through a miniscule hole way up at the top of their cave system. Yet, here she was.

Melrae whispered, "ma?", her voice coming out strangled even at so low of an intonation. Lilia nodded mutely, a strange sort of smile on her face. Melrae immediately tipped forward to hug her mother, but was startled to find she had leapt right through her. Mel fell, palms first, to the lush earth at the back of Lilia, then scrambled up wildly. She fixed her mother with a curious stare. When she remained silent, Mel felt oddly, as if something were inherently wrong. "Ma," she began carefully, "can you speak?" The other woman shook her head in response, first slightly and then rather frantically. Her white hair fell in waves, framing her angular face, and the pale lavender eyes that she shared with her daughter glistened with unshed tears. Mel looked stricken, and noticed now that her mother was, indeed, an apparition, wispy and semi-see through, like a plush fog she yearned so deeply to touch.

"Oh… no," Mel said quietly, her voice stripped of color. Her heart sunk as she realized what had to be happening. "Please tell me you're not blind, too."

Lilia gave a soundless chuckle, though her eyes were heavy with sorrow. She shrugged, then nodded. A little sound escaped Mel's mouth, something akin to pure, raw sadness. She found she couldn't cry; her entire body was too arrested with grief. Despite its beauty, she was in a cursed place, a purgatory. Lilia reached out, hesitantly, toward Mel, and Mel, already forgetting what had happened seconds earlier when she had tried to hug her, readily reached out to grasp her hand. This time it felt real; their hands did not pass through each other, but met solidly. Another sound hitched in the younger elf's throat, this time of joy.

"Thank Talos, I _can_ actually touch you," Mel muttered, staring down at their entwined hands with wonderment. Perhaps contact only worked in small bits.

The last time she had seen her mother was in the middle of her blasphemous rebirth. Sitting there staring at Lilia's hand in hers, Mel saw everything around her drizzle away, and she tipped, tumbling backwards through time. Her old home faded into view, twisted screams violating her subconscious. She saw her ma reaching to push her away now, her warped voice shrieking, "go, my little sun, do not look back at us". Mel had fled as they had planned to do together, as a family, but when she reached the way to the exit, the heavy brass key in her small hand, she had looked back. She was never one to obey the rules set out for her, and this time it would haunt her persistently, surely until the day she died. She looked back and saw her mother melting into another, more hideous form. She watched as haze overtook her eyes before they shriveled shut completely, watched her mother's splayed hand which seconds earlier had offered her escape, curl into a fist promising to attack her. Only when the creature sneered and hunkered down onto all fours, its mouth almost frothing, did Melrae break out of her horrified trance, running in the opposite direction without turning back around again.

An invisible force seemed to yank her back to this place, this suspended present. She was staring right at her mother, whose face was once again uncorrupted. Tears were running down both of their faces, and Mel realized, with a caustic sort of agony, that her mother had traveled with her on this brief journey through time. Lilia opened her mouth, desperate, soft croaks the only thing passing her lips, her eyes strained, her face flushed. Melrae leaned forward and, tentatively, rested a hand on her mother's cheek. It, too, was solid.

"It's okay, ma," Mel said. "Don't be sorry, please. I am sorry for you."

Lilia's bright eyes fluttered, and she leaned into her daughter's touch, staring right at her. She swallowed, laboriously, and Melrae could tell not only that she couldn't speak, but that her throat was parched to the point of pain, her vocal cords shriveled. Her mother's true image was here before her, but with many of the non-cosmetic shortcomings that came to her through the poison of their past. With effort, Lilia pointed a shaky hand to her eyes, then to Mel, then made a gesture with her fingers to indicate 'a little'. She nodded as if to encourage herself, her lips stretching into a shy smile, and she mouthed, 'you are beautiful', then, 'I love you', gesticulating as she did so. Her cheeks still shone with tears.

"I love you," Melrae whispered. They sat like that in the brilliant sun for a long time, until suddenly her mother's image seemed to evaporate beneath Mel's fingertips, and she was left cradling nothing, laying on a stiff mattress, her pillow soaked in tears, her heart utterly empty.

It was the early afternoon. Karliah sat in the corner, holding a book open, but her eyes were locked on her friend. Her voice was hesitant as she asked softly, "are you alright?"

Mel nodded, her body drained of energy. She felt heavy. The air felt heavy. Everything felt heavy. "I think… I think I just visited my mother in the afterlife," she said after a beat, frowning at the floor. Karliah gaped at her.

"How is she?" she asked immediately, to which Mel turned her face away, busying herself with plucking her knick-knacks off the side table.

"Not great, 'Liah," she replied, her voice unintentionally cold. When the Dark Elf said nothing, she turned back around and sighed. "It seems she's… suspended," she explained, her tone slightly kinder. She dumped her things onto the bed, jewelry tangling, and stared vacantly at it all. Karliah watched her carefully, looking almost afraid to speak, so Mel cleared her throat and stood, saying somewhat formally, "J'ara suggested we go straight to the Mages College and I agree. What say you?"

Karliah looked away and nodded. "Yeah, absolutely," she muttered. "I'll gather the rest of our things, you just…" she paused, shook her head and sighed. "Honestly go get yourself some mead." Without meaning to, Mel laughed. Karliah smiled.

"Aye, ye have some right good ideas, lass," Mel replied in a rough impression of Pau, crossing the room to leave. Before she passed through the doorway, Karliah held out a hand to stop her and said quietly, "And I'm sorry, Mel. About earlier." Mel nodded, reaching up to hold the Dark Elf's hand in hers.

"Don't worry about it, you were right," she said solemnly. She dropped her hand from Karliah's, and left before the other elf could say anything more.

They departed an hour later. Paurelis was about to wave them off, when a sudden look of realization dawned on him, and he reached into his pocket, extracting something small. "Here," he said, reaching out to hand the letter to Melrae, who felt her heart skip a beat. She carefully unfolded it, and there it was, the answer she was both hoping for and dreading: _yes._ Brynjolf is okay, he is perfectly fine without you. Tears pricked at her eyes but she held her breath, willed them back. Karliah called her name from the carriage, and Pau laid a hand on her shoulder. "Stay out of trouble, lass," he said softly.

Melrae hugged him, then ran to joined her companion. The rickety carriage got moving, and Mel waved at Pau until she was too far away to see him anymore.

* * *

It had been a few weeks of traveling before the College came into view. Snow was starting to stick to the ground. Melrae and Karliah hurried to beat the winter closing in; neither of them were too keen on camping in the cold.

When they were almost to Sharnhelm, they stopped to set up a fire. While Mel was pitching the tent, fighting with the harsh winds to pin it down, Karliah turned to her. "How did your mother look?" she asked hesitantly. Melrae stiffened in the middle of trying to sink the last pin into the ground. After a moment, she shoved it in and stood, her shoulders rigid. Then, she relaxed. It was terribly hard to keep your guard up against someone you wanted so much to speak to.

"Oh, 'Liah," Mel whispered, sitting down on the ground, looking away toward the College in the distance. "She was beautiful."

Karliah smiled and put down her kindling, then sat beside her friend. "She wasn't…?"

"No," Mel said quickly, knowing Karliah's implication. "But she was blind and mute. It's odd. The only things that carried over from her final form at death were the parts of the curse that weren't physical." She shook her head, a bitter laugh shooting past her lips. "I guess death is just cruel in that way… letting you be _almost_ whole again in the afterlife, but not quite."

Karliah nodded solemnly, and they both watched the College in the distance, its energetic tendrils of magic twirling all around the building.

"She would've loved the College," Mel said, her voice distant. "She would've loved all of this. All of Skyrim... this whole world. But she never had the chance to see any of it." A few tears ran down her face and she absently wiped them away. Karliah watched her.

"I don't think I've ever told you," the Dark Elf said quietly, "about how my mother died." When Melrae said nothing, Karliah continued. "They… strung her up. In Windhelm. She had just been in the market, getting me some _damn_ bread." Her voice choked, and Melrae reached out to touch her shoulder. "I saw it when I went out looking for her. It had been hours. She was in the Grey Quarter, of course. The only place for her, apparently." She sighed. "Before that day, I didn't know it was possible to fear the worst, and then have it actually happen."

The air between Melrae and Karliah seemed to thicken with shared grief. Their mothers had been startlingly similar, in that they were trapped, forced to live in the shadow of the world, their deaths equally degrading and unfair. Karliah let out a heavy breath and wiped the tears off her cheeks, laughing.

"We are one unfortunate duo," she muttered.

Melrae nodded. "Dealt an unfair hand."

* * *

The sun, Magnus, had begun to shrink. No one knew when it started, but once Karliah and Melrae reached the city a few days later, they were told about it by nearly everyone they saw. People would frantically rush up to them out of nowhere, screaming about Nirn being in danger. Even the guards were unconcerned with the anarchy.

After being stopped at least ten dozen times, they eventually reached the Dead Wolf Inn. Inside, it was no better. If men weren't slopping alcohol all over themselves, they were shouting at each other, throwing mugs against the wall. It seemed the innkeeper had given up, as he was sitting behind the bar, leaning back in his chair and watching the chaos ensue with tired eyes.

"What in Oblivion…" Melrae muttered, her eyes hopping from person to person. There was hardly a single calm individual in this town. They navigated the sea of people carefully, approaching the innkeeper. When they reached him, he said automatically, his tone wary, "the one on the right." Karliah shrugged, and they trooped together into the room. Karliah shut the door and collapsed back against it, her eyes wide.

"Not that I'm not terrified, of course," she whispered, "but what is going _on_ with this town?"

Melrae shook her head, dropping her knapsack to the floor. "Fear," she breathed. "Panic. I believe pandemonium such as this is natural, but it seems as if the people here are…," she shrugged, not able to find the words.

Everything seemed to be spiraling in on her all at once. Wildly, she thought the shrinking of Magnus might be due to Gallus's daedra, but she shook it out of her thoughts. It must just be that multiple daedra were doing their chores all at the same time. What a hellscape her world was turning into.

After sitting in silence for a few minutes, both elves reluctantly went to bed, and Melrae fell asleep quicker than she had expected. She immediately fell into dreaming. At first, it was pleasant, standard. She was sitting in the cistern back home, watching Brynjolf spar with a dummy. He was using a long loaf of bread as a sword, and his hair was loose, framing his face. He looked much older than she had last seen him. He was talking, but she couldn't hear anything. Not a sound except the water lapping up against the edges of the cistern.

Then, a feeling of dread settled over her. Her blood vessels felt constricted, her bones disappeared. Brynjolf's body broke apart into infinite particles, and the Guild vanished. She was floating now, suspended in something like water. Her soul ascended and suddenly, she was in space, watching as Magnus twitched and distorted before her. She turned her head slowly, the viscosity of the air around her so thick she was surprised she had the ability to move at all. There was Nirn, glowing in the distance, infinitely beautiful.

She looked away, back to Magnus. An unholy form hovered by it, arms extended. The figure was impossibly big, but she recognized it, even in its rawest form. Vaermina, the Daedric Prince of Nightmare. The daedra's head turned, inhuman eyes watching Melrae from across the length of the universe. The figure didn't speak, but Mel heard the hellish voice in her head, invading her body.

 _The Darkness craves me, and I, it._

Melrae watched, her body wracked with terror. The horror before her writhed in three different dimensions, each version of itself swaying dreamily against the stars. Melrae felt that she would die if she stayed here any longer, regardless of whether or not it was real.

 _Nirn will know the Darkness. You will know it._

Vaermina appeared in front of her, reaching out toward Melrae. The daedra's hands brushed against Melrae's face and she glanced down. Every finger was a diseased, rotting snake. Mel opened her mouth to scream, and instead swallowed Void. She choked, and Vaermina's eerily empty eyes watched her asphyxiate.

 _No,_ the voice crooned. _Not yet._

The daedra disappeared, and Mel was left to stare at the doomed Sun, her body slowly deteriorating. Bits of her flesh broke off and drifted away into the vastness of the universe. The stars and blackness around her moved with an unnatural fluidity, eating her up. She reached out her hands to a solution that wasn't there, grasping blindly at stars. A panic like she had never felt before and couldn't possibly feel again shredded through her, bringing white-hot pain to every part of her combined body and soul.

As if answering her, hands gripped her shoulders. Pure hands, safe hands, pulled her up, away from the end of the world. Hands made of flesh and blood and bone. Melrae's eyes opened against the vision in her mind and the room came rushing into focus over it, the vision remaining as a ghostly overlay. Melrae started so quickly that she pushed herself back and smashed her head against the bedpost. She stuttered wordlessly for a long moment, her mouth moving at ten times the speed it normally did, her eyes darting back and forth as if she were searching for something. Karliah watched her, her hands frozen above Melrae's body. She feared the worst—that Melrae's visions had finally caused her to go mad. She panicked, selfishly wondering how on Nirn she was going to find Gallus by herself, when Melrae croaked, "V-Vaerm-mina…"

Karliah breathed in sharply through her nostrils. "Is… is she behind this? Behind Ma—"

"Yes," Melrae said. Her eyes rolled back and forth in her head. Her small body shook furiously under the weight of the vision. "We—h-have to…" Melrae went still, her arm hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Her eyelids fluttered weakly. "…hurry."


	6. guidance

_I can't wait for summer, I can't wait for spring,_

 _I can't wait for someone who can't wait for me,_

 _I can't wait to fall in love._

It was Fredas again, and Vekel the Man was feeling positively unfulfilled. Before, he had been content with wiping the bar clean several times a day, for, at least, there were people there to watch him do it. Now, the turnout for drinking was at an all-time low, and it was only Brynjolf who stuck around. And what Brynjolf was doing was not so much watching as it was barely existing in a near-constant catatonic state. Today, they sat together, Vekel twiddling a piece of rope between his fingers, Brynjolf (shockingly conscious) leaning on his hand, staring absently across the room. They were especially upset today, considering the news that the world could possibly be ending, or whatever.

After a while, Vekel found he could no longer take it, and stood up quickly, his stool falling sideways underneath him. "You are… an absolute wretch," he said, his voice not as angry as it was disappointed. Brynjolf looked up slowly, not having been startled by the stool hitting the floor, his skull fuzzy with alcohol. "You're drinking yourself to death, and making me sit by to watch."

Brynjolf heaved a great sigh and stared up at his friend, looking almost remorseful. "I just feel…" he paused, shook his head. Vekel's eyes widened and he leaned across the bar, took the other man's tunic in his grip and stared at him, willing him to continue. Brynjolf shoved him away, looking annoyed. "Aye, aye, alright, you rabid beast," he assured, brow furrowed. "I feel like I've been cursed and not… not as Delvin said. Something else. Something… individual."

Vekel studied his friend's face, searching for a gag, a prank. But Brynjolf had suddenly grown serious, and he quite nearly looked sober.

"I feel… tainted, almost. Like I'm coming off a sickness," the red-haired Nord continued.

"Perhaps that could be one of many possible hangovers catching up to you?" offered Vekel sarcastically.

Brynjolf ignored him, staring down at his hands and shaking his head. "I've been thinking about the night Mel left," he said, her name coming effortlessly out of his mouth, so effortlessly Vekel was feeling as if someone had bewitched him to suddenly revert to normal. He dared not say anything now, nor even breathe, for fear that Brynjolf would stop talking and go back to flopping all over the bar instead. "I've been regretting all of it, what happened that night, what I did. I had felt so… sure of myself then, and now..." He reached a hand to his mouth, looking blank. A long moment passed where he looked deeply grieved. "Gods, Vek, I've never missed someone in my life more than I miss her," he choked out, his vocal slur returning slightly. His eyes looked dull, his hand smothering his mouth. Vekel watched him, his soul suddenly feeling burdensome.

"Bryn," he said after a moment, reaching unconsciously below the bar. He didn't know what he had grabbed from the shelf until it was in his hands. The other man looked up, his expression questioning, and saw it, the crumpled piece of paper. His eyebrows shot up quizzically. "She sent a letter," Vekel continued, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. "She… wanted to know if you were alright."

Brynjolf looked both sad and joyous all at once, an odd sort of grimacing smile gracing his lips. "She's alive?" he asked, eyes shining as he looked up at Vekel, who nodded, then reached out his arm to hand him the letter. Brynjolf seized it, his thirsty eyes snatching up each scrawled word before he had even gotten it full across the table, and his grim look shattered into a beaming grin. "I can't believe it," he whispered.

"Really?" Vekel laughed. "You _really_ can't believe that a little hellion like her would last, huh?"

Brynjolf chuckled. "Nah, 'course not," he muttered, his eyes flashing with something like a memory. "I would have to barely know her to know that she's more than capable. If it came out tomorrow that she was the new king of Skyrim, I wouldn't be surprised."

* * *

 _All was silent. Every thief in the Flagon peered at the odd, hunched creature that had just stumbled in, some of them whispering feverishly, others standing completely still. Brynjolf had stood up at the sound of the door banging, ready to fight, his young heart jumping at the chance to defend his new guild, but found that there was no threat. It was only a small, frail looking woman, crouched on the floor, her hair ratty and nearly brushing the ground. He couldn't see her face and he didn't doubt that, if he could, it would be too filthy to even make out her features. Every thief was frozen, fearful, oddly still. At one point Delvin muttered, though only Brynjolf could hear, "is that a bloody_ Falmer _?"_

 _Brynjolf was about to make a move when Gallus rushed in out of nowhere, his silent form sweeping past them and across the room like a phantom. He crossed to the door in a few easy strides and bent down to the woman, who openly cringed away, but after a moment, leaned back toward him. Brynjolf watched, his mouth slightly agape. Gallus seemed to be speaking to her, whispering. He reached out to brush her hair out of her face and Brynjolf caught a glimmer of startlingly pale skin. After a moment, Gallus hooked an arm around the woman and lifted her to stand, but she stumbled and fell against him. The tall Imperial bent and picked her up instead, cradling her like a bride. Her head lolled back once she was in his arms; she had fainted._

 _When he arrived back at the bar, everyone's eyes turned to follow him. He paused before he went into the cistern, surveying them all with a severe eye. "I'll be needing someone to help me nurse this woman back to health. She's quite nearly dead," he said, his voice a great commanding force in the silent room. Brynjolf stuttered something akin to, "yes", and stepped forward, watching the limp girl in Gallus's arms._

 _Gallus nodded, then turned to Vekel, who looked just as stunned as the others, and said, "fetch her some bread or something, and a wet rag. Water, too." He turned and swiftly departed, his hand gently supporting the girl's head, and Brynjolf trailed behind rather dazedly._

 _They entered the cistern together and Gallus deposited the girl on the nearest bed. Mercer, practicing duel with a dummy across the room, froze when they entered, looking offended, as if they had interrupted something very important. "Who's that?" he called sharply. Gallus's head snapped up from the girl, his hand hovering near her arm._

 _"A girl stumbled in. Seems she's been living in the Ratways for quite some time," he replied stiffly. Mercer grunted and walked away into another room. Gallus scoffed almost noiselessly and returned to the girl, his rough face softening. His hand flitted across her face, pushing her hair away. Then, he glanced up at Brynjolf, who was staring down at the girl with his face set in wonder. Gallus smiled lightly, but it went away within seconds, as if it had never been there._

 _"She's… Falmer?" Brynjolf muttered questioningly, turning his eyes up to Gallus. He was younger, then, and his face looked practically childlike with curiosity. Gallus nodded, his mouth set in an ominous line. "But…"_

 _"She must have escaped somehow," Gallus supplied simply. "A feat in and of itself."_

 _"Is she going to be alright?" Brynjolf asked, his eyes falling back to her face. Despite the dirt and the starved gauntness of her cheeks, she was beautiful, like no one he had never seen._

 _"I'll make sure of it," Gallus said._

* * *

 _Brynjolf had been assigned the special duty of helping to nurse the elf back to health. He and Gallus tended to her diligently, and the rest of the Guild watched on with eagerness. Everyone wanted her to wake up. Only Mercer refused to come near her, instead preoccupying himself across the cistern, or away from the Guild entirely. Brynjolf didn't condemn this, but rather welcomed it, and he suspected Gallus felt the same, though he did not show it._

 _The third day, when the girl finally awakened, her mystical lavender eyes had rested on Brynjolf's face automatically, a gentle smile tugging at her lips. He was sitting beside her, reading a book. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice misty and sweet. The Nord looked up. Her sudden conscious image made him temporarily unable to form words, and she fell back asleep before he could answer her. He cursed himself for wasting a chance to feed her. They gave her water and food despite her being asleep, but it was a difficult task, and one that Brynjolf did not look forward to. Despite it keeping her alive, it felt invasive to do._

 _On the fifth day, she woke up with finality, at three in the morning. Brynjolf had been dozing in his chair, his book splayed open against his legs. She sat up and prodded his forearm, grinning. He awakened to her smiling face right in front of his. "Oh," he said, squinting at her, his voice thick with sleep._

 _"Who are you?" she asked again. She sat on her knees, hands folded neatly in her lap, and studied him. She had the blankets pulled around her like a cloak, and her cherub-like face was illuminated by the light from a nearby sconce._

 _"Brynjolf," he said, quickly this time, so she would know before she fell asleep again._

 _"How did I get here?" she asked. Her eyes never broke from his, and he would have been unnerved if she wasn't such an ethereal, comforting presence._

 _"Gallus thinks you were living here. Well, not here, but… down here. Not with us, but in the… sewers," he explained disjointedly. He felt embarrassed mentioning any of this, feeling as if he were insulting her even though he had not been the one to cause her to live in the Ratways. No one should be forced to live there, but someone like her… it seemed profane to think of her and a sewer as coexisting._

 _"Gallus?" she asked. She glanced around. It seemed everyone was asleep. This Gallus was nowhere to be seen._

 _"Our leader." He watched her in the flickering candlelight. Was she unaware of how late it was? She looked so delicate, confused. How on Nirn could this be the same girl who stumbled in five days prior, covered in dirt and deeply malnourished? "What's your name?" he found himself asking, for he yearned to know, to fit a name to this girl, this dream._

 _"Melrae," she said. The name drifted out of her mouth like a wisp. She smiled at him. "What?"_

 _Brynjolf shook his head. "What? Nothing. Say, we'd better feed you while you're awake." He stood and hurried to the Flagon to fetch some bread for her, praying to any divine who'd listen that she'd still be awake when he returned. She was. Still sitting up in bed, looking around. When he dropped back into his seat beside her, her face brightened considerably._

 _She graciously ripped a hunk of bread off the loaf and held it poised in front of her mouth. "You know, I think you and I will be great friends," she said happily, before she loaded the whole piece of bread into her mouth and chewed resolutely. Brynjolf smiled._

* * *

 _After a month, Melrae was finally out of bed and hopping around, bouncing from person to person, trying to meet everyone as quickly as she could. She was much healthier now, not to mention_ clean _, and she kept her hair in a long braid which draped over her shoulders and swung across her front. She was an odd but welcome addition to the Thieves Guild. They usually moped about, hardly interacting with one another, focusing on their jobs over anything else. Her accidental arrival had been a blessing in disguise._

 _One day during Last Seed, Gallus caught her in an animated conversation with Viper, and asked if he could steal her away for a moment. She obliged, skipping after him into one of the training rooms. "Would you like to join the Guild?" he asked once the door was closed._

 _Immediately, Melrae answered, "no." Gallus looked crestfallen, but she continued. "Though, if you'd keep me here and train me in combat, teach me how to survive in this world, I'd like that." Gallus smiled down at her and nodded._

 _"Of course," he said._

 _So, Brynjolf began to train her. Despite his age, he was proficient in daggers and swords, even decent with archery, and he'd traveled throughout most of Skyrim before landing in the Thieves Guild. He was the perfect fit. Melrae had become friends with Karliah quickly, who was thankful to have another elf in the Guild, but above anyone else, she was closest to Brynjolf. Melrae's training took up most of their days, as Brynjolf didn't seem altogether eager to take on jobs. The Guild was well populated, so he wasn't_ needed _, anyway, which prompted him to thank his lucky stars. He found that he wanted to teach Melrae everything he knew, and perhaps have her teach him a few things too. Her knowledge was restricted, but she_ was _smart._

 _A week into their training, Brynjolf was teaching her how to handle daggers in combat. They were outside, and Mel's hair glowed in the autumn sunlight, wispy bits of it escaping from her braid. "Assume that your enemies," he said, holding his dagger near her side, "will never falter, never give you time to think. You have to know how to act at the exact moment you need to do it. Violence does not typically happen slowly, but all at once."_

 _Melrae nodded, her brow scrunched together in concentration. Thin ropes of her silvery hair hung down in front of her face, and her cheeks were pink from the effort of their practice. They had been at it for an hour now, and she was getting tired. She held her own dagger tightly in her hand. "So, if they come toward my side like you are, or from behind," she said slowly, "I turn like this," she pivoted on her heel, bringing the dagger swiftly to Brynjolf's neck, "and strike before they can?"_

 _"That's one way to do it," he said, grinning. "You're quick to learn."_

 _Melrae shrugged, stepping away from him and tucking the dagger away into her belt. "Didn't have much to do in the caves," she remarked, sitting down beneath the shade of a nearby tree. Brynjolf watched her. "I preoccupied myself with books, exploration… that sort of thing." She stared up at him. "What did you do as a child?"_

 _Brynjolf heaved a great sigh and joined her by the tree. "Just about the same," he said after a moment. "Except less books, more exploration. I'd hunt a lot. My father had his own personal supply of meat without lifting a finger." He laughed, almost bitterly. Melrae scrutinized his face curiously. He looked in the other direction, some pieces of his hair loose from his bun and sticking to his face, as well. "He died, when I was still a wee one," he explained, impatiently pushing the hair out of his eyes. "Bandits, 'course."_

 _At first, she had hesitated, but then she reached out to touch his cheek, her fingertips feather-light against his skin. "I'm sorry," she said, her small voice heavy with empathy. He looked back at her, into infinitely understanding eyes, then found that he had to turn away again, because her gaze was far too intense. He stood, forcing a smile._

 _"C'mon," he said, "we'll practice some archery and I'll tell you all about Solitude before dinner."_

* * *

 _They stood outside together, the winter winds whipping violently around them. Brynjolf pointed into the distance, toward a great mountain. "That," he said, a fond smile stretching across his lips, "is the Throat of the World."_

 _Melrae squinted, holding her hand up over her eyes to shade them from the sun. "It's very big," she whispered after a couple of minutes. Brynjolf chuckled._

 _"It's where the Greybeards live," he continued. "You know, what I told you about yesterday?" She nodded._

 _"Yeah, of course, Nord nonsense." She waved it away, looking up at him, a mischievous glint in her eyes. He pretended to be offended, clutching at his chest in mock offense._

 _"Lass, you wound me."_

 _Melrae giggled. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat and turned away, looking off in the opposite direction. "I think that's where I came from," she said softly, pointing. "Somewhere over there." She sounded sad, and her arm fell back to her side almost in defeat. She stood there stiffly, her mittened hands clenched at her sides._

 _"You're here now," he said gently, stepping closer to her. Her hair hung, as always, in a long, intricate plait at her back. He yearned to reach out and touch it, to unravel it and braid it again and again._

 _"I am," she replied distantly. Then, she turned. Brynjolf didn't have time to step back away from her, and they found themselves only inches apart. They stared at each other for a long time, the wind howling in the space between them, as if to taunt him. His mouth went dry, and he saw a gulp bob nervously in her throat._

 _"Hey, slowpokes!" called a voice from far away, and they both jerked out of their shared reverie, turning toward the noise. There stood Karliah by their stabled horses, a sweet roll in her hand. She was grinning wickedly. "Let's get a move on! Markarth waits for no one."_

* * *

Brynjolf blinked, and the memory of Melrae's face imprinted on his mind over and over; the smiles, the sparkling lavender of her eyes, the laugh that bloomed flowers within his belly. He looked down at the note clutched in his hand, then back up at Vekel. "I have to find her," he mumbled hoarsely, barely audible. Then, again, louder, he said, "I have to find her."

Vekel nodded. "You sure do, bud," he said, grinning despite himself. Brynjolf stood, the stool scraping against the floor in his hurry.

"Do you have any idea-?" Brynjolf started, forcing his boots back on over his feet and repeatedly losing balance, but Vekel held up his hand, his smile growing ever wider.

"The bird came from High Rock," he said. "Wayrest. Doubt they're still there, but it'll put you on the right track, I'm sure."

Brynjolf's face broke into an expression of immense relief. He reached across the bar and slapped his friend's arm, laughing heartily. "To High Rock it is," he said, and walked away out of the Flagon, leaving his half empty mug of mead on the counter for Vekel to finish off himself.


	7. synergy

**A/N:** A new chapter! I'm housesitting for my mother this week, so I might even be able to get out two more chapters within a few days. :~) Gettin' some more of that Brynjolf x Mel action except not really *action*, per se, and lots of back and forth. ( _Song lyrics = Agnes by Glass Animals.)_

 _You're gone but you're on my mind_

 _I'm lost but I don't know why_

Winter's hand drew fresh swathes of snowfall across the world, cloaking it in dreamy silence. An artist sprinkling pigment, first shyly and then with assurance and zeal. It sparkled like treasure, tasted sharply of nothing. Someone watched the snow as it fell; she always did. She tilted her nose up toward the dusky sky, snow drifting down from light pink and purple, gentle and glittering. She stuck her tongue out and caught a snowflake, let it melt in her mouth behind a smile. Sharnhelm was quiet in the night; those who had been panicking days before were now asleep, or shut up in their houses. She sat on the porch outside the inn and watched as winter came to muffle the city's sound.

She was thinking about him, the way he loved the cold, like her. It was in his blood and hers. She remembered angels against the white, their shapes distorted and winged, side by side. She remembered gloved hands pushing her into a pile of snow, a body falling on top of her, laughter that rang and rang against the emptiness of the snowy land around them. But she was alone here, and the memories were only echoes she could no longer touch.

Melrae pulled her knees up to her chin and sat like that in the cold, watching a world hushed by the demands of nature. She was reassured by the moon's presence, and the sun's lack thereof. She didn't want to be reminded of inevitable doom; she'd rather sit here in this suspended peace and think about other things, while she had the chance. Think about when her life had been free of stress, when she had not been running toward something she didn't know the shape of.

Her search for Gallus seemed fruitless. The man who had rescued her from the sewers was now chained and held somewhere beyond her comprehension, and while she could hardly stand the idea of it, she almost wanted to give up.

She screwed up her freckled nose in annoyance at the situation and looked away from the moon to the Mages College, hovering benevolently over the whole of the city. They hadn't gone there yet, although they had been in the city for close to four days now. Melrae was still recovering from her vision, suffering from occasional delusions, shaky in her movements. Only now, while the snow fell around her, did her mind feel free of the disease of daedra. It was as if even the demons were asleep at this time of night.

They had wasted much of their time holed up in their room, but it was hard to resurface. Melrae suspected Karliah might be wanting to give up, too, in a way. Neither of them would admit it, though, and certainly neither of them would truly let the other give up. But the thought still lingered in the back of Mel's mind like a malignancy, looming, waiting for her to grow weak again, so it could eat her up.

* * *

When he awakened, it was to the sound of wind howling. He stood, stretched, yawned. Glancing out the window, his eyes were met with a lavender-tinged sky, still dark with night. _I should go back to bed_ , he thought, but the world outside looked so deliciously quiet and incandescent against the new blanketing of snow on the ground. The moonlight kissed him through the window and said _come outside_. His feet carried him away, out of the inn, down the stairs, to his coat, and out the door. He was barefoot, but the cold didn't touch him. Only the muffled wind, skipping along against his toes like they were stepping stones. The sky looked confused, with its pastel hues spreading out against one another as though someone had carelessly spilled a soaked paint palette into space. He felt peace swell within him at the sight of all of it, and he thought of her. Hair white as first snowfall, eyes the color of the sky that accompanied it.

Brynjolf had been staying in an inn in Markarth for almost as long as Melrae had been in Sharnhelm. He had dumped a hefty amount of gold in the hands of a carriage driver he knew in Riften and convinced him to take him across the country as fast as he could. Shockingly enough, the driver and his horse were efficient as ever, almost magically so, and they had carted him around and through provinces without issue. When he finally got off the carriage, four long days of unbearably jerky movement later, his legs had been practically unable to hold him up. He'd sheltered himself in the inn since then, stretching out his limbs and sucking down mead in the warmth of his rented room. On top of the strain of his muscles, he was suffering from an embarrassing withdrawal due to lack of alcohol. All in all, Brynjolf was not in the best shape to be chasing down Melrae, but he felt he didn't have a choice. He'd already wasted enough time convincing himself he need not find her. She was constantly moving, squirming in and out of his mind; he would search until he saw her again. He had to.

* * *

A thought struck Melrae as she sat there beneath the moon. She remembered the night she had tried to feel Brynjolf's energy. She had been at it for hours, nearly clawing her own hair out, the agony of his hateful face printed against the inside of her skull. That face, above all other memory, had come roaring to the forefront of her mind, and clouded her abilities. Even after Karliah had comforted her, and they had gone to bed, Melrae still tried. She tried and tried until she fell asleep, her exhaustion overtaking her in a rush.

Looking up into the sky now, eyes bouncing from constellation to constellation, she pursed her lips. Tears prickled behind her eyes, threatening to spill. Should she try again? She wanted nothing more than to try again. To try and detect any trace of his resiliency or stubborn fire. To feel his presence wherever he was, _however_ he was. She just wanted to see him. The desire for it tugged incessantly at her chest. But could she bear it if she failed again?

She watched the sky for a long while, thinking. If she were to do it, now would be the perfect time. It was late at night, and most of the world was asleep. But she knew Brynjolf wouldn't be. She knew it, because she— _felt_ it. She started in her chair, and sat up straight, her body rigid. He was _there_. She felt the warmth of him pulsating somewhere not far away, or at least it seemed that way. She was looking around frantically, as if he would waltz right through the gates of Sharnhelm, when, suddenly, she did see him; he was outside, too, only a few feet away from her to the right. He was staring up into the sky, like she had. He had his back to her, his long hair stuffed into a mess of a bun, his arms hanging limply at his sides as he stood watching the stars. His image looked almost ghostly, and she knew immediately that he was some sort of projection, rather than a physical being.

Melrae stood and walked gingerly over to him, frightened that he was a mirage, and any sudden movement from her would make him disappear. In all honesty, this was probably true. Once she reached him, she didn't know what to do with herself. For a long moment, she just stared at his back, taking in his raggedy tunic and unkempt hair. Then, instinctively, she reached out to touch his shoulder, her hand shaking. She felt tears already drying on her face; she didn't know when she had started crying.

Her hand reached across what felt like acres of land before it touched Brynjolf's shoulder, and he instantly jolted, spun around. She yanked her hand back as if burned, fearful. How on Nirn had she been able to touch him? It reminded her of when she had touched her mother in that odd purgatorial world. She almost shook herself out of her trance out of perplexed fear, but then she saw his face as he turned. His features were gaunt and tired, but his green eyes still shone bright in the moonlight, like a forest somewhere far away. His stare darted around fiercely, searching; clearly, he hadn't seen her. But he was there, she could see him. She laughed despite herself, her body overwhelmed with every emotion she could ever feel, crashing into her like a tidal wave, all at once. _She had done it_.

"Hello?" Brynjolf whispered sharply, his head twisting around, hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sheathed dagger. He looked cautious, but at the same time, he didn't seem afraid. He turned back toward her, his eyes bouncing right past her form. "H-Hello?" he said again, faltering. His fingers slipped from his weapon. He stared past her, all around her, never at her. She made the conscious decision to reach up toward him to gently lay a hand on his cheek, a sad smile on her lips. Finally, a face to replace the one that was always on her mind. Brynjolf's real face, overtaking the look of malice he had last given her.

At her touch, Brynjolf stilled. His eyes almost glazed over, and he stumbled slightly backward from shock, then came forward, leaning fully into her hand. He closed his eyes. She didn't understand how she could do this, how she could touch him as if she were truly there with him, but she never wanted to pull her hand away.

"Brynjolf," Melrae whispered, her fingers moving up into his hair, eyes never leaving his serene face. At the utterance of his name, his eyes snapped open, and it was as if she had suddenly become a physical manifestation in front of him. He looked down, right at her, and gasped, reeling back from her. As abruptly as he was there, he was gone, fizzling out into the air, away from her, and she was alone again, standing in the street like a sleepwalker, her arms stretched out in front of her, toward empty air. Toward nothing.

* * *

Brynjolf was heaving on the ground, breathing so heavily he thought his chest would burst. His eyes were fixed on the empty spot where Melrae had appeared, then subsequently disappeared. Two footprints in the snow. He scrambled over on his hands and knees and stared at the set of prints. There was only one isolated set of them, as she had popped into existence and gone away only in that spot. But how…? His breath came out ragged, puffing warm vapor into the winter air. Had he imagined her? Or had she truly appeared there, and touched him, and said his name?

Brynjolf stood, trembling on his feet, and hurried back to the inn. He slipped in through the door and shut it, then leaned back against it and sank to the floor. His mind was swimming with her image. Snowflakes dotting her face as if they were her freckles, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight, her nightclothes draped over her small frame, rustling in the wind. He felt, there on the floor, as if he were drowning in that singular glimpse of her, her hand on his face and his name still frozen on her lips. She looked as he had first met her, dewy and inquisitive, staring at him in firelight.

Eventually, he stumbled to his room and fell into fitful sleep, his cheek burning slightly from the touch of her hand.

* * *

 _Brynjolf had been the first person Melrae saw when she woke up that second time-tangled in unfamiliar sheets, feeling as though she were in a new body-and that was why she forged such a quick bond with him. He hadn't saved her like Gallus had, but he was the first to introduce her back into the world, to walk small steps with her, to mold his patience to her progress._

 _She awakened, looked down at her skin, and saw that it was untarnished, that the filth of the Ratways had been washed off her. Looking back up, there he was, sitting right beside her, buried in a book. His position was familiar to her; she had read often in her old home, as it was all she could really do there. She couldn't stop staring at him, tendrils of his wild red hair breaking away from his bun and framing his face. Eventually, he looked up from his book, and the world seemed to shrink around his stare, giving her tunnel vision._

" _Oh," he said quietly, and shut the book. It became apparent to her that he had been waiting for her, and now that she was awake, he didn't have a plan for what to do. She felt her heart jump in her chest. She didn't have a plan, either._

" _What's your name?" she asked automatically, the words spilling from her chapped lips. She wanted to know nothing more than what he was called. Names were a good start to a friendship, she noted in the back of her head, though still feeling rather foolish. Though, he had supplied his name—Brynjolf—just as quickly._

 _Many of their nights went forth in that fashion: peacefully coexisting. Brynjolf made a habit of reading by Melrae's bedside and sharing snacks with her, an unsaid agreement between them both. He boasted often of how he was a night owl, but many times she would outlast him in staying awake. They shared some tidbits of their lives, but nothing too revealing. Mostly, they sat in silence with one another. He'd found a small stack of books for Mel to read, and they teetered on her bedside table, a sort of monument of hope for her._

 _One night, Brynjolf fell asleep, and Mel snatched the book he'd been reading out of his hands. It was a historical book about Falmer- her people. He was a fair way through it, she noted. She had no idea that someone had written anything about what had happened, but she supposed it made sense. After she escaped from the caves, she'd mostly run, and hid when she was able. She hadn't had the time until then to read._

 _Something in her stirred at the sight of the book, and she looked up at Brynjolf curiously. His head was slack with sleep, one hand resting on his belly and the other hanging off the side of the chair. Gingerly, she returned the book to his lap and leaned back, pulling the covers around her. She wanted to wake him up, but she wasn't sure why, so instead, she went to sleep, too._

Melrae snapped back to reality, her hand over her mouth as she crouched in the middle of the street, ruminating on the memory. She thought she should go inside, but found she couldn't—didn't want to—move from her spot in the snow. In front of her were his footprints, evidence of his presence. He had been there with her, had stepped into her life again, if not for only a second. She didn't want to leave them. She reached out and brushed her fingertips against the grooves his bare feet had made in the snow, following the faint contours. He had existed here; she had brought him here. Now he was gone.

Eventually, she stood, her limbs chilled to the bone, and slowly staggered her way back to the inn. Perhaps seeing Brynjolf just then could sate her. But… no. She knew it wouldn't. She knew that only experiencing those few seconds of contact would never be enough for her, not anymore. Regardless of who had been right about Brynjolf's reaction to Mercer's accusations, she needed to see him again.

* * *

"Way bigger in person, huh?"

Karliah was staring up, slack-jawed, at the enormity of the Mages College towering directly in front of them. The entrance sparkled with magic, and the swirling energy Melrae had seen from afar was now encircling them as they ascended a grand set of stairs. A woman sat in a chair at the top, a book aloft in her hands, her face unconcerned. How she could sit there ignoring the raucous cries of city folk below, Melrae had no idea. No matter how much she tried, the snow elf did not have that capability.

Karliah made a bit of a show huffing and puffing once they finally reached the top stair, but the woman didn't twitch. Not until Melrae cleared her throat softly did she look up from her book. She sighed with practiced exasperation. "Yes?" she said crossly, closing the book and looking expectantly at them both in turn, her bright blue eyes penetrating, analytical. She was a rather severe looking Bosmer, her blonde hair pulled up into a tight bun, accentuating her sharp features.

Melrae fumbled getting her words out, choking on her syllables as they tumbled haphazardly from her mouth. "I—uh, we—were…"

Karliah held out a hand and touched her shoulder gently, then smiled at the woman. Melrae immediately calmed and ducked away, looking instead at the complexity of architecture around them, feeling sheepish. "We're here because we're looking for someone, and multiple people told us that your college would possibly have answers," she said, packaging her words far more neatly than Melrae had. It seemed to be a gift she had.

The Wood Elf pressed her lips together and surveyed Karliah, her eyes narrowing. Then, her stare drifted to Melrae, and she almost seemed to soften, if that were possible. "A Falmer?" the woman said, in almost a murmur, fully taking in Mel's uniquely monochromatic appearance. Melrae blinked, glanced to Karliah as if for confirmation, then turned back to nod mutely at the woman. "Very well." The woman nodded and stood swiftly, tucking her book into a pouch at her hip. "I am Elsynea," she said gracefully, beckoning for them to follow her as she turned and walked into the hallway behind her. "I'll take you to the headmistress."

Elsynea brought them all the way through the College, past elaborately carved archways, small knots of chittering students, and enormous shelves stuffed with spell books. The Bosmer's stride was so quick and efficient, Karliah and Melrae both had trouble keeping up with her, occasionally muttering curse words to one another when she took a sharp corner too fast.

Finally, they reached what they could only assume was the headmistress's office. The door loomed over them, nearly touching the high ceiling. It was decorated ornately with gold trim, and real flowers bloomed from the cracks in the wood, crowding over one another, clashing their colors. Elsynea reached out and effortlessly yanked open the doors, revealing a somehow even more floral interior, almost a complete forest. Inside, behind a desk crawling with moss and vines, sat a woman of undetermined race, but certainly Elven. She sat tall in her high-backed chair, her long, dark hair draped over her shoulders. A large tree stood behind her, sprawled upward and reaching toward the ceiling, where there floated a large ball of light. The woman's hair was made up of small braids, entwined with leaves and bits of lavender and even some gold pigment. A circlet laid atop her head and it, too, was entrenched in vines. Her face was long and angular, but her eyes were a soft brown, and she was staring directly at Melrae with something unidentifiable in her gaze.

When she opened her mouth, Melrae had half-expected more plant life to come tumbling out. "If I knew a Falmer were visiting," she said after Elsynea shut the doors behind them, "I would have cleaned up a little more, perhaps dimmed the lights." Her voice flowed out of her like honey, deep and all-encompassing. She lifted her hand and the ball of light floating above them faded slightly. The headmistress smiled at her, then, and stood. She was tall and slender, and her bountiful aura pulsed off her like sparks. Dull green robes laid across her shoulders, clasped at the front with a large pendant of a leaf. Mel was enraptured, so much so that she found she had lost her voice.

"Pleased to meet you, headmistress…?" she heard Karliah say, as if through a vacuum. The woman did not take her eyes off Mel as she replied, "Alaelyth Sageshade."

"Alaelyth," Melrae heard herself say, hoarsely. The name felt familiar on her tongue, as if she had said it before. Her vision became sharply focused again, and she met the headmistress's eyes earnestly. "We need your help."


End file.
